Private Thoughts
by CrazyGirl47
Summary: Harry often wondered if Snape could read minds... well, the answer is yes. Snape gets bored while teaching potions and decides to read the private thoughts of some of his students. Written preOotP.


**Private Thoughts **

_Authors Notes:_ When I first started this fic, back in… um, January 2003, somewhere in there, I had it set during fifth year. Then the fifth book came out and, naturally, blew everything I'd made up to hell. So I've decided to keep this fic as fifth year, but I'm using some stuff from OotP, such as Grimmauld Place or Extendable Ears. Anything I've changed will be described in the fic itself. I'm also making a few small adjustme the only posted fic I have where I don't have the plot set in my head yet.

By the way, if you'd like to see an update, please review; the more reviews I get, the more I tend to update. I appreciate all sorts of reviews, praise and flames.

For the moment, I'm tearing down most of this fic for editing. I will put it back up in the future. This is a TEMPORARY thing. I have already deleted the other chapters and part of this one.

_Disclaimers:_ I don't own Harry Potter or ��s quite a bit of sexuality in here, more so than I usually use, so you've been warned. Please, please, PLEASE let me know if you have any suggestions regarding plot or pairings; I'm very open to ideas, as this is pretty much the only posted fic I have where I don't have the plot set in my head yet.

By the way, if you'd like to see an update, please review; the more reviews I get, the more I tend to update. I appreciate all sorts of reviews, praise and flames.

For the moment, I'm tearing down most of this fic for editing. I will put it back up in the future. This is a TEMPORARY thing. I have already deleted the other chapters and part of this one.

_Disclaimers:_ I don't own Harry Potter or anything else mentioned within save the plot itself.

_Pairings in this chapter:_ None during editing

**Part One**

Severus Snape had no idea why he could do it. He didn't know where he'd learned it, or if he even _had_ learned it; he wondered if it wasn't natural. His earliest memories were of trying to control it, of trying to block the talent.

Reading minds wasn't always a good thing.

In fact, it was_ rarely _a goodthing. He had grown up knowing exactly what people thought of him… and often, what they thought about others. Everything others wondered about, from worries about tests to anger at parents to sexual desires with the person next door, would assault his senses if he wasn't constantly battling to stop the words from flooding his mind. The only reason he'd become so knowledgeable about potions was that he'd hoped that somehow, someday, he would find a potion to cure his ability to read people's thoughts.

He had grown accustomed to the irritation soon enough, especially once he realized that his talent—or, as he liked to think, curse—was not going to have a cure, considering few had the power and fewer still had it naturally. He'd found dozens of potions that granted the user the ability to read minds, and had sampled the antidotes for several of them. Nothing worked, and he did what he could to keep the words of others out of his mind: he concentrated, he meditated, and he avoided both curiosity and boredom. When his mind wandered, others' minds hopped in.

The one use of his mind reading had been when Snape was a spy, reading the innermost thoughts of those in Lord Voldemort's inner circle. He had only rarely tried to extend his mind otherwise. Until one day, when he was teaching a class of double potions for Slytherin and Gryffindor fifth-years.

The class assignment was a rather complex potion meant to give the drinker the ability to hear thoughts. The potion made him think about his mind-reading talent, and he was giving himself a pat on the back. He hadn't accidentally heard a thought in years now; he was in complete control.

Just as he was thinking that something in his life was finally going his way, disaster nearly struck Neville Longbottom once again. A panicked yelp sounded and Snape looked up from his desk.

"No!" Hermione Granger fairly shrieked, only just in time. "You have to add the werewolf blood last, _after _the brew's stopped boiling, Neville! Careful! Hand me the dragon liver, please."

Snape raised an eyebrow. Usually, Granger was always on top of things; Longbottom never had the chance to come close to screwing up when working with Granger, which was especially good at the moment. One drop of that potion connecting with someone's skin…

_Granger, not paying attention? That's a first. The damned know-it-all never lets him get so close to melting a cauldron._

She was preoccupied. There was something on her mind. Something important, or she would have caught the mistake much sooner. Sure enough, as she went back to stirring in ingredients, a far-off look crossed her features, and she didn't bother to quietly preach the entire theory and process to Longbottom.

_Don't do it, _Snape told himself. _You don't want to know what that twit is thinking, now, do you._

Yes, he did, actually. Curiosity slowly overcame him, and he finally gave in and opened his mind to let Granger's thoughts flow into his head. She was thinking about a memory, a recent one…


End file.
